The Soup Queen

If you read this blog long enough, you know I love convenience. Maybe because I am lazy. I like to think that I like shortcuts to health. Anyway, for the past 4 months I have been taking this product that I feel has been doing me good, despite its hefty price tag.  But first, a little introduction is in order.  It's a product from Taiwan called Bing Han Refined Ginseng Powder and it's made from panax ginseng.  Bing Han Ginseng Powder from Taiwan It is water soluble. Which means I can dissolve it in water and drink it up. In my books, it's always a good thing right? Sheer convenience.  I had heard of the miraculous things people have said about ginseng. When my late grandmother was alive, she was given Korean ginseng and her white hair started turning black!  Anyway, Chinese folks love their ginseng. It's a well-known fact. I had a friend who used to drink ginseng soups when she was pregnant. Her two children do have beautiful skin!...

This definitely isn't a soup. It's a stew but it's such a robust, hearty stew that I have to share it with you. First of all, eating mutton was not part of my childhood. My mom never cooked mutton, noting that mutton was tough and had a gamey sort of smell.  When I was a teenager, I got it into my head that I won't eat mutton or beef. (Errr....to hell with teen ideals...I happily eat both beef and mutton now. I have a long way to go to be a vegetarian!) Mutton Stew with Carrots and Onions As I grew older, I started trying out all types of cuisine and I most loved Indian mutton curry especially mutton varuval. Oh how I loved my mutton varuval. It was spicy and yummy and all the things the cardiologists never want you to eat. When I was growing up, I always had cold feet especially if it was a week before my menstruation. This was part and parcel of PMS together with awful headaches, bloatedness and breast tenderness. Yes, I had the whole bloody works of ...

Sorry for the lack of posts. It's not that I have not been making soups but life and business intervened. Business, clients, family, life.  Whenever I get tired or bored, I'd head to the kitchen. I'll try a new recipe and a lot of people find cooking tedious (especially in my case when it's just my husband and me). Some people ask me, "Isn't it far easier to head out to the hawker stalls or a coffeeshop and get dinner over and done with?"  After all, I am living in Penang. The island with the most lipsmackingly delicious street food.  I admit that cooking small portions can be tedious BUT as I said, cooking and tinkering in the kitchen is my escape from a world that gets too hectic (at least for me).  Cooking and gardening are my escapes.  So this blog post is inspired by what's growing in my tiny patch of garden.  I've been growing serai or lemongrass in a pot in my garden. It's been thriving happily. But at times...

You know how it is with herbs. You don't really pay attention to it until you need it. Which is precisely what happened. Nic was complaining of a dull ache near his heart a few weeks ago. He was worried, I could see. After all, having a heart problem is no laughing matter. He is 40 years old but he has been physically fit most of his life. In fact, I am the one with the aches and pains. I am the one with knots in my shoulders (from hunching over the laptop no less) and need my fortnightly reflexology or Thai body massage sessions. He attributes his good health to cod liver oil which he took as a kid. This is not the first time I heard of the cod liver oil theory. I had heard it before from my ex-boss about a decade ago (that was when I was still working for others). He said the same thing. He said his daughters never had a cold or flu after taking cod liver oil. Nic is not a believer in Western medicine. He thinks it's a load of crock especially when doctors these da...

Ho Yan Hor Gold Herbal Tea ...the tea I take on my travels!  Here's one of those quick Chinese herbal remedies that I always carry around with me, especially if I am going to go on a trip. It's Ho Yan Hor Herbal Tea. Unlike some bloggers who are paid to tout the benefits of a certain product (and review the product but say all sorts of super nice things about the product), I hereby declare that I am not one of them. I don't know any of the directors of this company, I am in no way linked to them and I am not getting any commission for spreading the good word about their herbal teas. I am writing as an avid drinker of their Chinese herbal teas. While most people will take flu medicine, Panadol and all matter of tablets and pills on a trip, I will bring along a few packets of this tea. Travelling (even domestic travel) can take a toll on the body. Sometimes you drink less water, eat more (or shall I say, gorge more since everything looks fabulously delicious w...

I was away for a while because my paternal grandmother passed away on 2 February. We were busy with the funeral a week before Chinese New Year. Technically speaking, this year I am not really allowed to celebrate the Lunar New Year or give angpows. Of course the funeral director says that as a grand-daughter who has married, I am "following" my husband so I am allowed to celebrate. I couldn't. So it was a low-key Lunar New Year for me. You know how it is when someone you love passes away. Who would be in the mood to celebrate? My grandma was all of 95 and had been rather sickly, refusing to eat. My aunts were perplexed. They finally resorted to using a syringe to feed her porridge. She had been bedridden for sometime now but we always thought, nah, Grandma will always be around. She couldn't recognize anyone - not her children or her grandchildren - but she was always that unifying force, someone who made us all return to the big old house again a...

Clockwise, from top: fresh corn, dang shen, goji berries,& kudzu root Quite an intriguing title for today's post right? I was introduced to this soup by the auntie in the Lip Sin market. She's a regular grandma in her 60s but she operates a vegetable stall in the market and she's often my source of recipes, particularly soups. Last week, she introduced me to fresh kudzu. See that blob above in the photo that looks like a turnip or "bangkuang"? She told me it's called "fen kok" in Cantonese. I have never come across it before. I am particularly excited when I come across ingredients I've never used. This was no different. So I asked her what I could do with this "fen kok". She told me that it's good for boiling soups. She even told me that I should boil "fen kok" with some fresh corn, goji berries and "tong sum" (Cantonese) or "dan shen" (Chinese sage or salvia miltiorrhiza) and of cour...

Happy New Year everyone! I took a long break for Christmas and finally we all survived the Mayan prophecy but Nic asks in an almost sinister manner - How do you know if we're not all walking zombies? What if we all died in our sleep on 21 Dec and we're now in an alternate universe but we are unaware of it? My retort to that is: if I were a zombie, I'm still a zombie with my old personality - that is, I still want to look good, age well and eat well. Ah so. But this zombie has promised to write about my other discovery on getting hair to become black. See, vain zombie this is! Of course besides dyeing my hair with henna (something which my hair stylist, Desmond absolutely does not like but hey, it's my hair OK and my brain and I certainly don't want chemicals seeping into my brain cells for an hour), I have attempted to adjust my diet to include more hair-friendly ingredients. Just the other day when I was back home in Banting, my 34 year old sister wa...